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WEEK 2 2016

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Saturday 9 January 2016

Saturday - Back in town, feeling pretty tired again.

Lunch with friends, then some other chores around the house - emptying and putting away all the stuff from the rental room, clearing out most of the debris in the Explorer.

Book #1 was Madness in Solidar, (Imager Portfolio #9) by L. E. Modesitt.

Friday8 January 2016

Friday - OTR. I went by the PRD office in the morning and returned some of the survey equipment that I wasn't likely to use again, keeping the camera and wheel for a few more days.

Then I drove up to Ojai and the Flora Gardens Nursery to pick up some Matilija Poppies for S, managing to cram ten 1 gallon pots into the already pretty full Explorer.

Then it was home to Lancaster.

Thursday 7 January 2016 Thursday - OTR. I headed down to Ventura, and met up with everyone in Saticoy. The final inspection went fine - there were some minor subsidence's on the shoulders the the rains exposed (due mainly to incomplete compaction - but we were particularly gentle on shoulders, not wanting to break the old pipe at the couplers), a half dozen or so, and a cleanout that hadn't been installed, but otherwise it was fine.

I had lunch on Dave's dime afterwards, then visited the office with Tim for a couple things, then went over and cleaned up at Larkin street, vacuuming the room and using cleaners on the bathroom.

I also packed up all the remaining stuff that I'd left in Tim's room last week, into the Explorer.

By the time all this was done I was too tired to head back to Lancaster, so I stayed at the boat.

The boat batteries, both of them, were completely dead. I'd unplugged the shore power, but this was a surprise. I plugged it back in and let the batteries charge overnight - keeping the companionway hatch open.

It was windy out, and the boat surged and rocked quite a bit - a very nice feeling.

Wednesday 6 January 2016

Wednesday - Overcast, mostly, but not much rain. Since none is predicted at all in Saticoy we're still on for the inspection tomorrow.

In advance of that I generated a spreadsheet with addresses, stations, and pay quantities, in pretty much the order we'll walk them. To be honest this should have been generated before we started working I think, it might have made things easier.

And I think I'll use it to generate the digital versions of the reports for each lateral, i.e. paper -> excel -> word, via a script for the last part, we'll see how much effort is involved. It took a surprising amount to generate even this worksheet, I thought maybe an hour, it took six.

Tuesday 5 January 2016

Tuesday - Rain! Lots and lots of rain. We need it, but not all at once would be nice...

I took the Explorer into the mechanic. There was an oil change due, tire rotation, and the brake pads on the front needed replacement. These are all things I could personally do, but it's easier to let the mechanic do it.

Office work here was more backup stuff. I think I've saved the Xcode credentials, and I backup up all the App project work, my pictures folders, the web page archives, and various other things. Yes, I have Time Machine, and it does seem to be working, but...

As far as S's old machine, I found my DigiStor blu-ray burner and it burns DVD's too, so if Knoppix has k3b we're set to go I guess.

I'll head down to Ventura tomorrow sometime, and meet up for the final walk-through on Thursday morning, when it's predicted to be a bit dryer. In the meantime I have stuff to do here to finish out the project, as I said.

Monday 4 January 2016

Monday - Still no rain, though it's now predicted for tomorrow. I've had fires lit the last few evenings, but it was pretty warm and I didn't want one this evening. Since they are predicting a lot of rain I threw a tarp over the woodpile.

Mostly just backing stuff up off the Mac Book computer. Time Machine has done it's job (it seems), but I don't really trust spinning storage anymore. Particularly with all the nasty viruses and malware out there now.

I want to put a clean install of the OS on there - Yosemite was done as an 'update' to Lion and was always kind of messed up, and slow to boot, and I couldn't access or even delete and reinstall Bootcamp on it. So that's a bit more work than usual. But it will allow me to get rid of the accursed Adobe installer/malware, from Lion days, that still has it's tentacles into everything...

Speaking of which, S had a severe computer infection a couple of weeks ago. Microsoft's own AV software couldn't handle it, and even though I created a Puppy Linux boot disk and went in and manually rooted through various system files I couldn't get it out. Finally she tried MalwareBytes, and that seemed to do the trick. I can recall having the same problems and doing much the same sort of things with Windows 95 and Windows XP. But it's ridiculous that this sort of thing is even possible in 2015. Microsoft just doesn't care I guess.

Apropos of this she asked me to get some files off her older (non-booting) Dell before trashing it.

I made a Knoppix boot disk, as Puppy was just a bit too minimal. Naturally Apple made making a simple disk image a multistage process involving creating a *.cdr image from the *.iso image before burning. WTH? No-one else forces you to do that, not Microsoft, not Linux, just Apple.

Anyway, I found that I could, with an effort, boot the Dell off the Knoppix 7.2 CD and access her files. The problem is, since the system is on the CD drive, how to get the files off the hard drive? I just wanted to burn to a DVD, and not use a USB key because I wasn't sure how virus-free the old machine was and didn't want to copy any evil stuff over to any of my machines. Somewhere I have an old external CD/DVD burner, but I can't seem to find it now. I'll check as to whether my external Blue Ray writer also burns DVDs.

Anyway, once I get the files burned to permanent storage I'll remove the hard drive and return it to her with the DVD, and take the carcass to the city drop-off for eWaste, along with a number of others of my own that I want to get rid of.

The Contractor claims to have finished, paving and sidewalk work and everything, so we need to set up a final inspection for the near future. And I need to get all my notes in order, get the daily and lateral sheets in order, and figure out what to do there. And go down and mark up the drawings for the correct "as-built's". So we're not really done with the project just yet.

I need to go down, but there's no set schedule yet.

I'm taking the Explorer into the mechanic tomorrow, I'll get an oil change, tire rotation, and probably a set of new brake pads.

Sunday 3 January 2016

Sunday - A quiet day, I didn't do much.

It occurs to me that I have no idea of what's going on in the NFL this year, I've just been too busy. I assume the 49ers are out of it, but I don't actually know that.

Picture of the Week

A winter sunsets cloudscape

A winter sunset's cloudscape over Ventura, 2015.

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